Face it: everyone likes to have their pants off. At least that’s what the organizers of Pants off Dance Off are hoping. The fundraising event, now in its second year, is raising funds for travel scholarships for HIV- and Hepatitis-C-positive youth to attend the Youth Unleashing Power symposium, held here in Vancouver Island, in June.
The PLUR collective are playing at Pants off Dance off; the letters PLUR stand for “peace, love, unity, and respect,” and the collective is made up of a group of musicians who love house music and enjoy throwing safe, community-oriented parties. Former Camosun College student and current harm-reduction worker Piotr Burek is a member of the musical collective.
“It’s a term that was coined in the later ’90s rave scene,” Burek says about the name. “So we kind of just wanted to take the history of PLUR and the history of raving and just come together and start throwing events that honour that history. One thing that makes us unique as party promoters is that we are all also harm-reduction workers in the community, and we have quite a good understanding of drug culture as well as harm reduction.”
Burek and the rest of PLUR are longtime fans of house music and the rave scene. However, the idea to throw an event where people party without pants on to raise money for HIV was not their own concept; they, in fact, got the idea from a similar, but broader, international event.
“There are these awesome series of international parties that are called No Pants, No Problem,” says Burek. “They’re HIV fundraisers that go across the world, so these parties take place in many different countries.”
After reaching out to the organizer of No Pants, No Problem to ask if they could throw a similar underwear party, Burek and crew rolled ahead. According to Burek, the rave scene is itself a political act, and the scene represents the convergence of a community, and the ability of that community to help others through fundraising and charity.
“Just having an understanding and an awareness of power structures, and the way in which the rave scene actually is a political act, I believe, is really important,” he says. “We understand that a lot of rave music, such as techno and house, comes out of poor communities, and often communities of colour, and so we really want to bring an analysis of anti-oppression into the work that we do, and that’s why all of our parties are fundraisers.”
Burek says that future events that PLUR are involved with will be queer friendly, based in community building, and “firmly grounded in principles of consent and harm reduction,” as well as aiming to be zero waste.
“We really just want to build a community around the parties,” he says, “and have stronger ties with each other.”
Pants off Dance off
9:30 pm, Friday, January 20
$10 (no pants)/$15 (with pants), Copper Owl
copperowl.ca